“Don’t move, Metric,” came Commander Stiles’s voice. “Or you know what’ll happen.”
Suddenly he couldn’t swallow, though he wanted to very much. He stared at the distant blank wall and closed door on the other side of the desk, and listened to a faint roaring sound—his bloodstream—grow louder in the room’s silence.
“I’m going to take the gun away from your head,” said the commander evenly. “Then I want you to go and sit down in the chair on the other side of the desk. I’ll be aiming at your heart.”
The cold circle of pressure against his skull ceased. Without turning to look back, Ralph walked slowly around the desk and sat down in the smaller chair on the other side. Then he looked up.
The gun, a fixed point in space, didn’t waver as Commander Stiles lowered himself into his own chair. It remained outstretched in his hand, pointing its dark metal snout at Ralph’s chest. Their eyes met over the weapon between them.
“Metric.” The commander shook his head slowly, the seams in his face shifting in amusement. “Very irrational of you to come back here to the base. Just as if we haven’t had you under suspicion for a long time. Didn’t you think we’d keep an eye on anyone your friend Stimmitz was spending so much time with? I watched you looking through the jeeps outside. I even know all about your little adventures in L.A.—I was told about them as soon as I had reported that you had shown up here. So nothing you’ve done has really been very clever, has it?”
Ralph’s voice moved like a rasp through his dried throat. “No,” he said. “I guess not.”
The commander sighed. “I’m afraid Senator Muehlenfeldt has run out of patience with you. Frankly, he’s been hesitant to use, uh, harsh methods to find out what you know, because of what happened with the other Beta group member that was questioned. But we know what to expect now, so the danger caused by an explosion can be limited to just yourself. The worst that can happen—except to you, of course—is that we won’t get any info out of you at all.”
“Stiles.” Ralph felt dizzy looking at the other’s impassive face. “Do you know what’s going on? Do you know what they’re doing here? What they’re going to do?”
“Come, come,” said the commander mildly. “Of course not. Moral persuasion is of little use here, I’m afraid. I’m too much of a professional to be concerned about the purpose of the whole thing. Everyone who works for Muehlenfeldt is a professional.”
The room’s contents glowed as adrenaline pumped into Ralph’s blood.
He had gleaned enough from Stiles’s mysterious references to formulate a plan. “In that case,” he said, leaning forward, his voice taut, “I’ll just have to set off my device right now and take you with me.” He reached with careful drama for one ear.
The commander dropped the gun and pushed himself frantically away from the desk. His chair toppled backward as Ralph dove head first over the desk and collided with his chest.
Stiles’s arms scrabbled weakly at the carpet as he lay dazed and gasping beside the overturned chair. Ralph reached back to the desk and picked up the gun. He pointed it at the commander but the trigger didn’t budge.
The older man was raising himself, up on one arm and Ralph still hadn’t found how to release the safety on the gun. He threw it by its barrel at the commander’s skull, producing a loud crack and a groan from Stiles before he slumped back down and lay without moving.
The keys were in the desk’s top drawer. He stuffed all the sets into his pockets and climbed back out through the torn screen. In less than a minute he had matched one of the key sets to the ignition of one of the jeeps and started it with a roar that did much to satisfy and quiet his trembling limbs. He backed away from the building, then threw it into first and headed for the base’s gate. Kathy and Goodell, walking on the path from the apartments to the Rec hall, leaped out of his way, then watched with open mouths as the cloud of dust churned towards the highway.
Chapter 14
The wind blowing through the open jeep seemed to clear his thoughts and give him a sense of purpose. Las Vegas, he said to himself. There should be an FBI office there. Somebody who’ll listen, and he able to do something. He pressed the accelerator harder against the jeep’s floorboard. The decision was already firm within him that, no matter what happened, he’d get Sarah away from whatever it was that claimed to be her father.
Miles of straight or gently curving road passed between the flanks of the dunes on either side, glaring fiercely in the afternoon sun. He found a pair of metal-rimmed sunglasses in the dashboard cubbyhole and put them on. The dark lenses reduced the rearview mirror from a rectangle of burning reflection to the visible awareness of the road piling up behind him. There was someone following him.
He studied the mirror, glancing at the road briefly to keep from going off on the shoulder. The figure behind him was a motorcyclist. He could make out the sleek black fairing that transformed the cycle into a bullet shape, and—was he imagining it or could he really make out so much detail?—the tinted, blank face shield of the rider’s helmet as he bent low over the handlebars.
The distance between Ralph and his pursuer was slowly growing less, the figure becoming perceptibly larger in the rearview mirror.
Must be one of Muehlenfeldt’s men, thought Ralph. He’ll be on me before too long. The jeep was already pushed to its limit, at a speed much less than that of the motorcycle behind.
Signs flashed by at the side of the highway. The road would soon divide into two, one branch heading north and the other continuing on to Vegas.
Maybe, thought Ralph, maybe . . .
When he came to the fork in the highway he took the northward branch, the jeep’s tires squealing as he arced through the start of a long currving section running behind a low rubble-faced bluff. He caught a quick glimpse of the motorcyclist taking the same turn behind him, before the bend in the highway brought the bluff between them.
As soon as he was sure he was blocked from his pursuer’s vision, Ralph hit the brakes, trying not to skid and leave any telltale black marks on the asphalt. He lost control for a moment and felt the jeep’s rear end slide out from beneath him. When the vehicle came to a stop it was sitting cross-wise in the lane, pointed towards the flat desert beyond the side of the road.
Without turning the steering wheel, he dropped the jeep into first gear, trod on the accelerator, and lurched forward. The jeep rolled off the edge of the asphalt, then plunged down a steep bank of loose rock and dirt. The rear wheels spat small rocks into the air as the jeep careened sickeningly downwards. Ralph clung to the jittering wheel.
The jeep came to the bottom of the slope and hit the level desert floor with a whump that bounced Ralph from the seat. The engine choked and died but he made no movement to start it again. Instead, he listened, hearing at first only the slight clatter of pebbles dislodged and rolling down the slope. Then came the growling roar of the motorcycle, diminished by the distance to the highway above. It grew louder, peaked in a snarl, then dopplered away, following the curve of the highway.
Ralph started up the jeep and accelerated across the sand, cutting across the interval of desert towards the other branch of the highway. It would be a while, he knew from his memory of the area, before the northbound branch would straighten out far enough away from the bluff for the motorcyclist to see that his quarry had eluded him. By then Ralph should have gained a sizable lead on the route to Vegas. He sped up, the jeep bouncing over the rock-strewn desert. It was, he knew, only a temporary reprieve.